Sara Miller McCune, the founder, publisher and executive chairman of SAGE Publications, has defied the odds for 45 years to prevail as a woman and a private owner in a field dominated by men and mergers to become the grande dame of academic publishing and a philanthropic diva for education, social justice and the performing arts.

The girl from a brick row house in Queens who learned to read at age 4 and skipped a year in junior high school, who fell in love with publishing in her early 20s and sold a used air conditioner to launch SAGE in 1965, today oversees a global corporation with yearly sales well over $200 million and a work force approaching 1,000 employees on four continents.